Thursday, 17 September 2009

In my last post I wondered what would happen if we, the teachers, just "let go" from time to time and, instead of trying to control our students, we just observed them. Something like that.

I was merely trying to be clever, you see. However, some people took me seriously, as you can see in the comments area. Thank you, Nina and Dennis, for very constructive comments and for making me think. I even promised I would try letting go in class from time to time.

Then I remembered that it had already happened in one of my classes. Before I go on, notice the word "happened". You will see that it is very appropriate.

It was quite a while ago. I was teaching a group of upper-intermediate students (adults) and they were really nice and cooperative. One girl worked in the German Embassy and she said she often played Taboo with her colleagues. She thought Taboo would be a great game to play in class. I agreed and promised to do someting about it. To my surprise, she brought the game to our next class. It was the original game, not one of those activities we, the teachers, create when we want to recycle vocabulary. And it had originally been in German, so she had single-handedly translated all the cards.

She literally took over from the beginning of the class. She took my place and I suggested I should be one of the students that day. She divided us into groups, explained the rules, timed us... When it was my turn to explain a word, I got a bit confused, which made the students rather pleased.

The reason I remember that class so well is that I have always felt it was one of my best classes ever. And, as you can see, it hadn't been planned by me at all.

I do wonder what the students thought about it, though. I wish I had collected some feedback.

What do you think? Should I have done what I did? Or should I have stuck to my lesson plan?

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About Me

My name is Natasa Bozic Grojic and I am a teacher of English from Belgrade, Serbia. I teach adults and I have been in this job for 20 years.
I first got interested in Web 2.0 and blogging in January 2008 when I attended two EVO sessions - Becoming a Webhead and Blogging4Educators. That's when I started my first blog. I called it simply Natasa's blog.
I suffer from what I call Multiple Bloggonality Disorder. There are four personae in my blog right now - the Learner, the Teacher, the Geek and the Writer. The Learner goes to different workshops and online sessions and uses this blog to write homework. The Teacher is eager to share her experience and talk to other Teachers. She is particularly interested in student motivation and classroom dynamics. The Geek likes to try out new Internet tools. She is always happy to share her opinions and feelings about them. Finally, the Writer. She treats blogging as a writing exercise and thinks it is fun.